I was reminded of Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy's infamous sound byte (used as the title of this article) when I read about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's foot-in-mouth moment during a recent CNBC interview (YouTube Link). Here's what Schmidt said: "I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

"In a slightly different context, William Burroughs if memory serves talked about spies being blackmailed during the Cold War for being homosexual; the answer would be in Burroughs' eyes for the spy in question to roar: "I'm a queer, and I luuurve it". So, one defence against all this is to be exactly true to yourself,"

Except that at that point homosexual acts were still illegal in many places. So doing that would've been a one-way ticket to prison. (There's another great indicator of the importance of privacy).

Point taken but the reason why homosexual relations no longer constitute a criminal act in many states now is that people went out on the streets and turned private "shame" into public pride. This process will continue, and it's already shaking the foundations of some very conservative institutions - i.e., the Christian Church (look at the turmoil in the Anglican Communion at the moment on account of someone who is frequently named as "the *openly* gay Bishop". Everyone in the AC knows there are hundreds of "screaming queers" (not meant in a derogatory way) in its ranks. It took just one person to voluntarily shed their privacy to trigger the public debate that will change that particular branch of Christianity fundamentally (it is to be hoped, at least!))